19500903 0900 24sn

1 September

In the middle of the 25th Division line, south of the 35th Infantry, the enemy
breakthrough at Haman
became a terrifying fact to the division headquarters after daylight,
1
September.

General Kean,
commanding the division, telephoned Eighth Army headquarters and requested
permission to commit, at
once, the entire 27th Infantry Regiment, just arrived at Masan the previous
evening and still held in
Eighth Army reserve. General Walker denied this request, but did release one
battalion of the regiment to
General Kean's control. [24-58]

General Kean immediately dispatched Colonel Check's 1st Battalion, 27th
Infantry-which had been
alerted as early as 0200-from its assembly area near Masan toward Haman, to be
attached to the 24th
Infantry upon arrival at Colonel Champney's command post.

The 1st Platoon of the
27th Regiment's
Heavy Mortar Company; a platoon of B Company, 89th Tank Battalion; and A
Battery, 8th Field Artillery
Battalion, reinforced Check's battalion. Check with his battalion arrived at Champney's 24th Infantry
command post two miles east of Haman at 1000. [24-59]

The scene there was chaotic. Vehicles of all descriptions, loaded with soldiers,
were moving down the
road to the rear. Many soldiers on foot were on the road. Colonel Champney tried
repeatedly but in vain
to get these men to halt. The few enemy mortar shells falling occasionally in
the vicinity did no damage
except to cause the troops of the 24th Infantry and intermingled South Koreans
to scatter and increase
their speed to the rear. The road was so clogged with this frightened,
demoralized human traffic that
Colonel Check had to delay his counterattack. In the six hours he waited at this
point, Check observed that
none of the retreating troops of the 1st and 2d Battalions, 24th Infantry, could
be assembled as units. Sgt. Jack W. Riley of the 25th Military Police Company tried to
help clear the road. Men ran
off the mountain past him, some with shoes off, half of them without weapons,
and only a few wearing
helmets. He shouted for all officers and noncommissioned officers to stop. None
stopped.

One man who
appeared to have some rank told him, "Get out of the way." Riley pulled back the
bolt of his carbine and
stopped the man at gun point, and then discovered that he was a first sergeant.
Asked why they would not
stay in and fight; several in the group that Riley succeeded in halting simply
laughed at him and
answered, "We didn't see any MP's on the hill."

At 1600, the 2d Battalion, 24th
Infantry, assembling in
the rear of the 27th Infantry, could muster only 150 to 200 men. [24-60]

At 1445, General Kean's orders for an immediate counterattack to restore the
24th Infantry positions
arrived at Champney's command post. Check quickly completed his attack plan. For
half an hour the Air
Force bombed, napalmed, rocketed, and strafed Haman and adjacent enemy-held
ridges.

Fifteen minutes
of concentrated artillery barrages followed. Haman was a sea of flames. Check's
infantry moved out in
attack westward at 1630, now further reinforced by a platoon of tanks from A
Company, 79th Tank
Battalion. Eight tanks, mounting infantry, spearheaded the attack into Haman.
North Koreans in force
held the ridge on the west side of the town, and their machine gun fire swept
every approach-their "green
tracers seemed as thick as the rice in the paddies." Enemy fire destroyed one
tank and the attacking
infantry suffered heavy casualties.

But Check's battalion pressed the attack and
by 1825 had seized the
first long ridge 500 yards west of Haman;

by 2000 it had secured half of the old
battle position on the
higher ridge beyond, its objective, one mile west of Haman. Two hundred yards
short of the crest on the
remainder of the ridge, the infantry dug in for the night. [24-61]

All day air strikes had harassed the enemy and prevented
him from consolidating his gains and
reorganizing for further co-ordinated attack. Some of the planes came from the
carriers USS
Valley Forge (CV-45)and
USS
Philippine Sea (CV-47), 200 miles away and steaming toward the battlefield at
twenty-seven knots.

West of
Haman the North Koreans and Check's men faced each other during the
night without further
battle, but the North Koreans, strangely for them, kept flares over their
position. In the rear areas, enemy
mortar fire on the
24th Regiment command post caused Colonel
Champeny to move it
still farther to the
rear.

2 September

In the morning, under cover of a heavy ground fog, the North Koreans struck
Check's battalion in a
counterattack. This action began a hard fight which lasted all morning. Air
strikes using napalm burned to death many North Koreans and helped the infantry
in gaining the ridge. At noon, the 1st
Battalion, 27th Infantry, at last secured the former positions of the 2d
Battalion, 24th Infantry, and took
over the same foxholes that unit had abandoned two nights before. Its
crew-served weapons were still in
place. During 2 September, the Air Force flew 135 sorties in the 25th Division
sector, reportedly
destroying many enemy soldiers, several tanks and artillery pieces, and three
villages containing
ammunition dumps. [24-62]

Early the next morning, 3 September, the North Koreans heavily attacked
Check's men in an effort to regain the ridge. Artillery, mortar, and tank fire
barrages, and a perfectly timed air strike directed from the battalion command
post, met this attack. Part of the battalion had to face about and fight toward
its rear. After the attack had been repulsed hundreds of enemy dead lay about
the battalion position. A prisoner estimated that during
2-3 September the four
North Korean battalions fighting Check's battalion had lost 1,000 men. [24-63]